TMT sector emerging as catalyst for India's digital progress: KPMG

According to a new study released on Tuesday, businesses need to transform their business models and build major — not incremental — new revenue sources in order to retain the expected impetus to the technology media and telecoms (TMT) sector.

The report titled 'TMT Industry CEO Outlook: Smart. Secure. Sustainable' at India Mobile Congress 2020, stated, “Organizations need to invest heavily in infrastructure and technical developments, supplemented by sufficient government funding.”

In addition, the government needs to introduce recent schemes rapidly and provide more transparency to improve consumer confidence, it said.

Cybersecurity, supply chain, regulatory, financial stress and emerging technologies are major risk factors impeding the growth of the TMT market. Uncertainty in the supply chain has affected industries worldwide, prompting a redesign of the architecture of the global production network.

The report said that India's current environment offers an opportunity to position itself as a promising alternative development hub for global players.

A challenge is the potential risk arising from the rate of disruption caused by new technologies. Around the same time, it is no longer a choice to preserve the existing state and not to implement these technologies.

Cybersecurity risks need to be addressed with stringent risk management strategies due to continuous remote working.

To support regulatory requirements and building consumer trust, this will be significant.

The long-standing financial and regulatory challenges also need to be discussed with a collaborative approach between the government and private players, according to the report.

In order to optimise business processes, increase the visibility of the supply chain and predict bottlenecks, companies everywhere need a new array of technology solutions.

The TMT sector needs to develop its business models in response and engage in active partnership to provide consumers with interconnected technology and communication solutions.

As the TMT organisations themselves re-focus on accelerating digital transformation, to provide improved customer service and generate value, they also need to adjust to the evolving digital first-customer conduct.

Considering the current financial challenges of India's telecom industry, telecom operators need to pursue ways of reducing their high capital expenditure by leasing and sharing infrastructure operations.

Telecom companies will have to closely coordinate with IT companies to build the necessary technical infrastructure due to an increase in the penetration of smart devices, wireless technology and advanced computing technologies across industries.

While telecommunications players continue to focus on network virtualization and cloudification, additional investment will be needed to develop their data centre management and edge computing capabilities.

Such changes would allow them to use cases and applications that need low latency and high bandwidth, the report said.

Emerging technologies offer an array of solutions across industries for re-molding business and operating models.

However, to prioritise future investments, companies would need to measure the relevance of new technology initiatives against success metrics.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.